- Switching to Proportional Representation within the House of Representatives

Both of which I approve of, strongly. In addition to these changes I believe that the Senate either needs to be abolished or reformed to account for population and that the Electoral College needs to be abolished.

“Gandalf put his hand on Pippin's head. "There never was much hope," he answered. "Just a fool's hope, as I have been told.”― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

As of today, 4 Supreme Court justices were hand picked by Presidents who lost the popular vote.

I don't view the Senate sustainable since it heavily favors red states and gives the President too much power to shape one of the 3 branches of government for decades. It's a concern since governments derive their power from the consent of the governed, and whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government.
A Supreme Court without popular support and consent is a recipe for disaster which can cause large upscale rising.

In this country there had been unpopular governments before, but they were still viewed as legitimate governments with the consent of the people. Even the Bush appointees were largely approved. However, this Trumpism movement is promoting a government without popular consent or legitimacy thanks to the removal of the filibuster and the stolen Garland seat..

Electoral systems are compromises. The framers didn't give small states power because it was the purely moral thing to do, but because in 1789 it was necessary to ensure each state supported the Constitution. When these systems stray too far from the popular support for long periods of time, it deprives citizens of any ability to enact non-violent transitions of power. There are more states in this country that are red states mostly because of the culture in the rural that favors the republican platform. If the Senate is red no matter how the people vote, and the Supreme Court is red for 20 years no matter the votes-- the only way for the public to achieve change is through extreme means.

To quote JFK, those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

I'm watching MSNBC and they're talking about the fires that are ongoing around here in Northern California and one guy that lost his home to the fires was talking about a tree that burned down that was over 300 years old meaning that no fire that bad has happened there for at least 300 years.

He then blamed "forest mismanagement by the California Department of Forestry."

300 years old is clearly older than forest management in this area is. He seemed to start his statement off with recognizing that there's no other possible solution to why these fires are so constant around here now is that simply the climate isn't the same as it used to be but then he just turns into a talking point he heard from Trump.

While there's no way that guy actually believes that the California Department of Forestry
and Fire Protection has always been around and has always managed this land and kept it free of such devastating fires up until recently when California legalized recreational marijuana use and the Department has just hired too many stoners that aren't capable of their jobs ever since, but that's pretty much along the lines of what he's saying by citing how rare a fire like this normally is in history, but that they keep happening all of the sudden and it's the Department of Forestry's fault for not doing their job.

People dismiss me like I'm a lunatic preacher saying it's the end of days whenever I say what I feel like is obvious and that this is part of global weather change. We need to manage our forests better and be more immediate

It's not like this is some thing new and no one has ever heard of a forest fire. Earlier this year there was a fire complex that was actually larger than the ongoing one in total size was going and was just a little bit to the West of this current fire and last year 5% of this city's building were destroyed last year by what was, at the time, the most destructive wildfire in California history.

Median household income has not gone up at all over the past 40 years in America, but we're all continuing to do our part of the world pollution all for this economy that's not actually making our lives any better at the end of the day. I see all this pollution the same as I would see a debt, and so I see all of this as if we're all just living a life of racking up a debt while not seeing an increased quality of life unless if you're in that top 1%.

We're all going to suffer for the gains of the rich, that is my truth the way I see it

Sometimes I feel like I'm in an episode of the Twilight Zone or something, how the fuck do they not see that the Bombardier family are a bunch of welfare queens who'll just keep taking money and cutting jobs. They've already done it twice in the last few years. How many more times? How many more billions of dollars? How many more lost jobs? And this is a different party in government, they have no sunk cost fallacy holding them back, they literally think that this time it'll be different.

This looks really bad and it boggles my mind that Trump could think that he'd be able to pull this off and not get noticed. I trust NBC enough to believe their sources are reliable enough, but as soon as Turkey released all of this information about Khashoggi, I thought it was odd given that I knew they were upset at us having the cleric that they blame for orchestrating an attempted coup.

All alone by himself, Gulen is too well known about for people to not notice if something happened to him.

All alone by itself, a scheme like this where you essentially bribe another party or even worse a separate country's administration in order to silence a scandal is unacceptable.

Without it being such a juicy scoop, the Trump administration is incapable of not leaking. I don't understand how he could think he could think that he would be able to pull off this scheme and no one ever finding out.

Trump is dealing with this whole thing awfully. The entire Khashoggi thing never had to become a scandal for him. You could argue that Obama or especially Bush would receive backlash for however they would have handled this situation, but I have a feeling KSA would probably not have pulled a stunt like this if we didn't have a president that is so easily compromised and that there's no way that Turkey would think they could extort Bush or Obama like they apparently believe they can do to Trump

The most frustrating aspect about all this political turmoil is that the baby boomers are screwing over the younger generation.

Back then, Americans could go to nice college and get tuition paid for in full just by washing dishes for a few days a week.

Back then, companies paid competitive salaries with good pensions.

Back then, it was easy to buy a house and to have assurance that social security will be there.

My generation doesn’t have it as good yet I have to listen to the older generation tell me how millennials are entitled and lazy.

It’s scary how powerful right wing propaganda has controlled such a huge voting population in America.

I’m hopeful with the younger generation but it may be too late.

I did a speech on education inequality recently for one of my classes , and the problem really starts early on. Fact is poor areas just don't get the same funding or resources to their K-12 education that more affluent areas get.

I have family in Rio Linda, which is a less affluent town next to Sacramento that Rush Limbaugh makes fun of because of it's white trash reputation, but the kids are started off in Elementary schools that don't have the ability to provide the same education that better funded Elementary schools can and then they come from families that rarely are able to afford to send their kids to college even if their kids were able to get accepted.

Especially since Trump has come and rapidly increased the erosion of our democratic institutions, I've been feeling the future of the American Dream might be for people to leave America to find more affordable living situations elsewhere. Second and even third jobs are common around here even for people that don't have families to take care of.

I feel like this quote from someone interviewed in the article above says what a lot of us are feeling

For most millennials the only option for them if they want to retire will be to move to a developing country, it's just not feasible in the US. Though moving to another country is easier said than done because US citizens in particular also have to wrestle with double taxation for the rest of their lives: no matter where in the world you live you're always subject to US taxes because the US has a citizenship-based taxation system (the only other country that does this is Eritrea). You can usually exempt foreign earned income under $100 000 each year, but even if you don't owe any taxes the cost to file can easily be $2000. There's also countless examples of US citizens being denied bank accounts in the EU because the penalties imposed by the US for not properly reporting account holders with US citizenship are very steep, so instead of risking that penalty some banks instead opt to ban US citizens from holding accounts.

Having US citizenship as an expat is itself a liability in many cases, and what worries me about the expats who've moved abroad to escape student loan debt is that the current administration could eventually push for civil or criminal penalties for those expats, like seizing their financial assets or cancelling their passports.

On the other hand the US appears to be one of the few countries from which a person may renounce citizenship, and I imagine that would also remove any right the IRS would have to enforce taxes on people outside its borders. Of course, this comes with its own host of issues if you don't hold another citizenship.

Even if you have another citizenship renouncing US citizenship can be an expensive process, in response to increasing numbers of expats renouncing citizenship the government recently increased the price to over $2000 just to file for renounciation. You also have to pay any taxes from previous years including an exit tax, and many 'accidental americans' (dual citizens with few or no ties to the US) find they owe a lot after learning they were supposed to file in previous years.

Someone like Boris Johnson can afford to relinquish US nationality but it's cost prohibitive for average people even if they have multiple citizenship.

I'm watching MSNBC and they're talking about the fires that are ongoing around here in Northern California and one guy that lost his home to the fires was talking about a tree that burned down that was over 300 years old meaning that no fire that bad has happened there for at least 300 years.

He then blamed "forest mismanagement by the California Department of Forestry."

300 years old is clearly older than forest management in this area is. He seemed to start his statement off with recognizing that there's no other possible solution to why these fires are so constant around here now is that simply the climate isn't the same as it used to be but then he just turns into a talking point he heard from Trump.

While there's no way that guy actually believes that the California Department of Forestry
and Fire Protection has always been around and has always managed this land and kept it free of such devastating fires up until recently when California legalized recreational marijuana use and the Department has just hired too many stoners that aren't capable of their jobs ever since, but that's pretty much along the lines of what he's saying by citing how rare a fire like this normally is in history, but that they keep happening all of the sudden and it's the Department of Forestry's fault for not doing their job.

People dismiss me like I'm a lunatic preacher saying it's the end of days whenever I say what I feel like is obvious and that this is part of global weather change. We need to manage our forests better and be more immediate

It's not like this is some thing new and no one has ever heard of a forest fire. Earlier this year there was a fire complex that was actually larger than the ongoing one in total size was going and was just a little bit to the West of this current fire and last year 5% of this city's building were destroyed last year by what was, at the time, the most destructive wildfire in California history.

Median household income has not gone up at all over the past 40 years in America, but we're all continuing to do our part of the world pollution all for this economy that's not actually making our lives any better at the end of the day. I see all this pollution the same as I would see a debt, and so I see all of this as if we're all just living a life of racking up a debt while not seeing an increased quality of life unless if you're in that top 1%.

We're all going to suffer for the gains of the rich, that is my truth the way I see it

Eh, your logic is a bit flawed.

So, first off, climate change has certainly had an impact on Californian wildfires (though it's difficult to say "they're this bad because of climate change", you can say that climate change made it being this bad much more likely) but poor forestry management also made them worse than they would've been with no forestry department. The problem is that until very recently the standard policy was to extinguish all forest fires when they started (or near enough), which makes a kind of sense: Douse them while they're small and you never have to worry about them getting big, right? The problem is that small fires clear out brush and dead growth in a reasonably controlled manner, and if you douse them all you get a lot of fuel building up that would otherwise be consumed in a more controlled manner. Eventually you reach a state where what would otherwise be small fires become raging infernos because there's just so much for them to burn.

Another big factor is also government-related, in part, but in a different way: People are building more houses, and that means that more land that was previously wilderness is now inhabited. That means that areas that, in the past, could burn without it being an issue now need to have protection because people are living there. This is a rather no-win situation for various Californian governments, however, since they desperately need more housing, and even though low-density suburban stuff isn't the most efficient source of it, it still helps, and denying building permits to reduce the damage from fires is just going to cause housing prices to go even higher (and making it all high-density just means that the fires can do even more damage).

As for pollution, the US is, slowly, getting better about it. It could be a lot better, but it's making some progress. Not enough, and you're right that pollution is an externiality that should be regulated much more strictly, but it's not all doom and gloom yet. It's also not quite as simple as saying that pollution is due to the 1%. While a small number of companies are responsible for most global pollution, the people buying their products are all over the income scale. Poor people need/use transportation, plastics, and electricity too, and cheap world-wide shipping lowers the prices of goods that everyone buys.

I'm decently well-off, not much in the way of expenses, and if the price of fuel went up 500% tomorrow I'd probably cope OK, but a lot of people wouldn't, which is why the push for electric vehicles and more efficient ships is so important. If you can keep cheap transportation but also cut the pollution to effectively zero then you do a huge amount to save the planet.

California has a major housing crisis. I mean, the more you get outside of the cities the less of an issue it is, but the cities desperately need more housing, which means they have to expand into new land, generally, which means they're closer into areas where fires used to happen without issue but now are a problem 'cause people are around.

So you can either make fires more dangerous or leave people unable to actually live anywhere.